


What Tomorrow Was

by wherestheramen



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: Gen, Jaebri, Open Ending, Platonic Pining, bestfriends!AU, like a flowing wind inspired, losing a best friend hurts mate, post-friendship breakup?, the ocean, um dowoon maybe next time?, yeah - Freeform, yeah i wrote this when my best friend left for uni
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:48:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23297293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wherestheramen/pseuds/wherestheramen
Summary: Tomorrow was supposed to be two of them. Tomorrow was supposed to feel like finally. But Younghyun is still here when Jae is not. Younghyun is still stuck in what he thought would be yesterday by now. Tired, he pulls an escapade, even if it only lasts as long as a sunset.feat. a taunting Wonpil and Sungjin being his mom-like self.
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil, Kang Younghyun | Young K/Park Jaehyung | Jae
Comments: 6
Kudos: 16





	What Tomorrow Was

**Author's Note:**

> Wow, this is my first time publishing a fic online. I've been writing on and off for years. 
> 
> This one has been sitting in my drafts since last October when the album came out and I wrote this on a whim with Like A Flowing Wind's one-hour loop video on repeat, heh. and I'm still not the most satisfied with it. But it's one I can at least give myself a pat on the back for. I figured if I keep locking things up until I attain "perfection" they'll never see the light of day. This piece is quite reflective, more to indulge in a mood? It's an attempt at a somewhat "healing" type of narration but please do feel free to critique things you find could do with improvement!
> 
> note: names of places in this work are fictional and have no geographical accuracy.

“Hey, Kang Younghyun, wake up.”

Being smacked awake by his seatmate after the Marketing professor walks out is not how Younghyun expected his third semester to end. For a moment, he doesn’t have a clue where he is or who the brunet in front of him is or why the back of his head has ebbing pain. He first registers it’s Wonpil’s unimpressed gaze is bearing holes into him, then the fact that the lecture hall is emptying with people glancing at him not-so-discreetly, and _oh ,_ class has ended.

“Did I fall asleep again?” Younghyun wipes a trail of drool leaking from the corner of his mouth with his shirtsleeve.

“You were snoring.” It’s pretty evident Wonpil has a lot locked up behind his tongue, impatiently tapping his foot while shoving Younghyun’s papers and notebook into the satchel for him. 

“Oh shit, I’m sorry.” Younghyun blinks, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands. “It’s no big deal, man, literally no one cares-”

“Congratulations,” Wonpil says as the lights shut, he then throws a bundle at Younghyun’s desk. “You failed the module. I forgot to study for it and still scored a B+. How much of a goner do you have to be to fail a class I didn’t even study for?” 

In most cases, Younghyun would argue that Wonpil really underestimates his own intellect and that his strengths are different but right now the afternoon sun is pouring in through clerestory windows, the sky is winter blue and Younghyun wants to go out. “Sorry.”

Wonpil doesn’t relent. “You need to get your act together, hyung. When was the last time you got six hours of sleep? I’ve been saying this for months now, do you really want to fail halfway into your degree?”

Younghyun picks up his satchel and stands up with a sigh. It’s going to be a while. He stuffs his hands into his jacket’s pockets, nodding.

“And you know what’s worse? Right when she announced it you went,” this is where Wonpil proceeds to imitate a snore but pretty much sounds like a pig instead. He gets side-eyed by a few unfamiliar faces, smiles and waves awkwardly at them before clearing his throat, “Yeah, where was I? Yes, the whole room was quiet and I had to sit beside your ass and watch this shitshow unfold and even when I nudged you, you just kept slapping my hand away and groaning even louder than you snored and- you know what? Just wait ‘til Sungjin hyung hears about this.” (Sungjin. Life sciences department. Practically Younghyun’s second mother whose scoldings drill him into the ground.) Wonpil huffs and turns to walk out the row. Younghyun latches onto his arm.

“No, wait! Hey, Wonpil I’ll bring my grades up, I promise! You know I’m having a hard time these days, hm? Please don’t tell Sungjin hyung, I’ll really do my best.” Younghyun tries to soften the taut line Wonpil’s lips have etched into his face. Wonpil doesn’t relent. (Maybe a little but he won’t let it show, not his time. Younghyun assumes he’s learning these tricks from Sungjin.)

“I know you’re having a hard time, but I don’t understand why you make things worse for yourself than they already are. I don’t know what catastrophe you’re waiting for to start fixing up.” The thing about Wonpil is that he might be all straight edges and sharp corners, but he carries them around sandpapered and softened with bright eyes and a face that’s smiling even when it isn’t. Sometimes his smile seems to be pulled into the ground. It isn’t often. But it is now.

Younghyun fights the weight settling in his chest, but he’s a little tired. A little tired of school, a little tired of being suffocated, a little tired of chasing daydreams, a little tired of missing someone too much, a little tired of the cycle he can’t seem to break out of. It adds up to a lot. He pushes his hand into his jeans pocket, fingers sliding against grainy cardboard. Wanting.

-

It was long ago that two boys with big dreams and little freedom chanced upon this postcard under the awning of a corner-store, summer searing the air. Jaehyung and Younghyun. Back then, Jae and Brian. Peter Pan and lost boy. Lost boy, still lost as ever today. 

“Brian, which one do you want?” Jae asked, hand on the handlebar, bright blonde hair tinged orange under the striped awning’s shade, glasses slipping down his nose bridge with the sweat.

“Melona,” Brian said, hands tucked into khaki pockets. 

Jae stepped in to buy ice cream with whatever loose change the two managed to pool from their jeans and coat pockets, and Brian waited in front of the news racks, skimming over comics that were a luxury he couldn’t afford. It was then his gaze fell upon a postcard sitting awkwardly in front of a manga issue, dusty and corners bent.

Jae pushed through the door (though said ‘push’ on the outside) with his shoulder, two Melona packets in his hands. Tearing open the pack with his teeth, he stepped beside Brian, shoulders knocking. He stuffed the wrapper into his pocket while following the younger’s line of sight. It was the image of a late-afternoon on a sandy shore. 

He had handed Brian a popsicle, who said “we should go there sometime,” gaze lost in the reverie of a warm sky over calm sea.

“We should,” Jae hummed, “We will.”

Brian turned to look at Jae, whose gaze was already on him. He sighed, wistful, tying a little dream to the moment. “One day.”

“One day.” Jae smiled easy.

-

Wonpil sighs, strides closer and slips an arm over Younghyun’s shoulder to pull him into a hug. Pats his back and holds his weight. “I just want to see you do well,” he says as Younghyun sinks a little further into his friend’s hold.

It’s between thinking that Wonpil is somewhere between a pillow and pillar, Younghyun says “Can I borrow your bicycle?”

Wonpil pulls away and looks askance at him. “When?”

“Now?”

“No.”

“But your classes don’t end until six today! I promise I’ll be back in time.”

“That’s not the point. Literally two minutes ago I asked you to raise your grades and now you want to skip class-”

“I’ll even treat you to lamb skewers, okay?” 

“Stop bribing me. I’ll tell Sungjin hyung.”

“Piri, please, just once! I promise it’s for a good reason.”

“Now where have I heard that before? The last time you bunked? Or the time you pulled three all-nighters? Or the time when you forgot to eat since breakfast the day before-”

“Wonpil please, I have something really important to do today, please please please-” Younghyun is on the verge of aegyo with his whining. Wonpil is mildly disturbed.

“It better be. Make that galbi-jjim and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

“But I was saving up for-”

“Deal or no deal?” 

Younghyun deflates. “Deal.”

“Really?” Wonpil’s eyebrows raise almost unnoticeably, he nods, gears turning in his head as he fishes out his bicycle lock’s keys out of his pocket. His gaze lingers on Younghyun for a moment longer than it should before dropping them into his palm. It reminds Younghyun of the time he walked into class with his newly blond-dyed, untrimmed hair last year-- Wonpil’s eyes zeroed on his hair before turning his head back to his economics textbook and mumbling _“You didn’t send me your segment of the analysis report.”_

Younghyun looks at Wonpil in a way that might have been borderline lovestruck. Wonpil, well acquainted with his dramatic tendencies rolls his eyes before walking out of the hall. “You better be back in time, I don’t have a ride home,” he drawls.

“Don’t tell Sungjin!” Younghyun calls after his profile pushing through the lecture hall doors.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Asshole.”

Younghyun looks up at those windows, holds his hand up to meet the stream of sunlight pouring in, lets it pass through his fingers and prick his eyes. For someone who’s known him for a little less than a year, Wonpil seems to understand a lot. It’s almost as if he can start over again.

-

It’s a spontaneous decision, one that Younghyun made only seconds before having a meltdown for the third time this month after Wonpil gave him a piece of his mind. It’s a decision he had locked away for much too long as a dream of someday with someone he knows won’t come back. The destination, Naver Maps says, is 45 minutes away. He figures he doesn’t have much time. There’s only three hours until six, he doesn’t think he’ll be able to catch the sunset and make it back home on time. Still, if he doesn’t go today, he doesn’t think he will muster the courage to again.

The situation has its shortcomings. One, Younghyun has only three hours. Two, he hasn’t ridden a bike in about two years. Three, he’s never managed to leave the vicinity of his home, the business faculty and the car-ride between the two alone without a friend and his parents’ notice. Today, he calls up his parents to say he’ll stay until closing hours in the library for a group project, then calls Wonpil to cover for him, who bargains for lamb skewers as service tax -- all while riding a bicycle and checking up on the map route every few minutes.

There’s still plenty of time to think on the way. The world towering above him, high rise concrete forests shorten into hilly neighbourhoods which thin out into strands as he rides through the suburbs. Where people don’t know, don’t care about him. The burn in his thighs builds slow, turning into a constant hum as pedals along, pushes against the time that rushes past him with the wind. It doesn’t take long for the onrush of freedom to sink in; the wind, now colder, rushing into his chest and the warm sun placating him like a firm hand on his back. When he first sees the pier each second closer feels like coming home, like a dream turning into a miracle, but still like a photograph ripped in two. The person he thought would share this moment with him is perhaps on the other end of the ocean.

There’s plenty to think about. Plenty to remember. 

-

When Younghyun lets go of the bicycle handlebar, cold air settles into his palms. He stuffs his hands into his jean pockets, pulling out a postcard. He holds it up against the view before him — boulders disappearing into sand, sand into the sea, sea into the sky, and the wooden pier he’s standing on stretching across these layers.

_One day_ is scribbled in black marker across the back of the postcard, and on the bottom left corner,the beach’s coordinates.

And it was always like that. Jae ready to run and Brian the string tethered in safety, dreaming, but always keeping him from straying too far. The role reversal with Wonpil feels weird. Younghyun’s newfound recklessness and Wonpil’s gentle grounding. Rebellion and Sensibility. It should’ve been him and Jae, like it was supposed to be.

Brian stole the postcard that day— swiped it from the rack and slipped it into his pocket when Jae turned to walk down the summer-beaten road. It seemed unwanted anyways, with the edge of a shoeprint on the back. 

He pulls out his phone, stares at the blank screen for one, two, three seconds and presses down the home button. The chatbox is filled with shells of words he wants to say. The last of it ends like this:

_Miss you hyung_

_Sleep well_

The text cursor blinks. Ticking time anticipates words. Younghyun is tired of filling words in the textbox and leaving them there until another conversation begins and erasing them for ‘ _busy day?’_

He wants to send the words away. Away, even if it doesn’t reach the person he wants it to reach. The breeze can carry them where it’s out of sight and feels like a message received (it’s okay if it isn’t). He opens the camera, taps once. Click. Edges further back and tries again, turning down the exposure. The bicycle peeks through the bottom right. Click. 

Younghyun hesitates, something writhes in his ribcage but before it has the chance of crawling up, he presses send and shoves the phone into his pocket, eyes lost in the wonder of this place that seems to have materialised only to him. There’s empty fishing boats piled with fishing nets and whatnot tied to the pier’s legs. A little farther, where the rock face along the coast builds up, a homely seafood restaurant sits at the edge and watches over the serenity. 

He wheels his bike to the pier, stands for a moment as the breeze sifts through his clothes. It feels like a security check, to tell apart intruder and visitor. Younghyun holds his arms to his sides, closes his eyes and feels shivers run down his torso. 

His phone vibrates and Younghyun is nearly certain his heart has squeezed harder than it ever has before. He pulls it out, reading the dimly lit message on the screen.

_wya?_

He pauses. Once more opens the camera, clicking a picture of the postcard held against the view.

_???_

The image takes too damn long to load. Younghun resists the urge to say anything. It does finally, a grey tick turns into two, turns into blue.

_we said we’d go together tho_

Younghyun just stares at the six words on his screen. He wonders if it’s only a pacifying lie wrapped up in hope, whether Jaehyung too misses Younghyun like he misses him. Whether Jaehyung really understands.

He lifts his head from the dimming screen that falls black, watching the sea disappearing into the distance which, if he braved long enough, would carry him and his heart to where he wants his words to reach. For now, it seems like the horizon teeters on the edge of a void, pulling colours and clouds into it. 

Younghyun steps off the pier barefoot, descending in wobbly steps and carefully latches onto moss-masked rocks. Regardless, he faceplants into the sand. He then realises he’s not sure how to get back up to the pier. But that is a problem for later. 

Younghyun settles where land meets sea. The sand fills the spaces between his toes and the lapping tides wash it away, leaving the hem of his jeans soaked and nearly frozen. He simply tucks his chin further into his padded jacket and puffs his cheeks as winter bites. Younghyun digs out a notebook from his backpack among folders of assignments and readings. Its black hardcover has white-inked doodles of a burger and a chicken with glasses- an attempt at Chicken Little (then there are dick jokes that he scribbled more white ink over because his mother would castrate him had she seen them). The pages are filled with lyrics and messages scribbled on the corners during boring lectures. Song names and lyrics jotted down over phone calls and to-do lists draw the shape of what life was. What days were with his best friend. It’s down to the last few pages, lasting as long as they did. These empty pages are ridged with the writings of then, all overlapping in the form of memory. Today Brian writes on them. 

-

Kang Younghyun. Brian Kang. Sometimes Jae would forget Brian was Younghyun first, and sometimes Younghyun forgot Jae was a half that was whole. 

One summer, in Younghyun’s cream-walled, teenage room the pair sat cross-legged with their history notes spread out on a floor desk. Jae propped his elbows on the sheets, leaning forward. “Why Brian?” 

“What?” Younghyun replied, eyes trained on the worksheet he was correcting with the marking scheme.

“Your name, why is it Brian?”

Younghyun took a moment, striking off the last answer on the sheet before looking up. He hummed, sighed, then began. “You see, it all began in middle school, we had a student exchange trip to Toronto, and no one could pronounce my name there.” 

“Tragic,” Jae nodded, complying with the brunet’s dramatic antics. 

“It is! All you had to do was remove the second half of your name and boom, job done! But I can’t do that. Just calling myself ‘Young’ is weird. So I opened a list of baby names on the internet and read through A, read through B until finally, I reached Br. And there it was. _Brian_.”

“Wow, how romantic.” Jae nodded amidst a stifled laugh at Younghyun’s attempt to build suspense, then looked at him in a way Younghyun often noticed Jae did. It was unnerving at times, at others intimate in an unprecedented manner. Usually, he’d snap Jae out of it with a smile-laced “what?” But then, he simply waited. 

“Brian fits. You look like a Brian to me,” Jae said, head tilting into his palm.

Younghyun’s mother walked in then, a bowl of fruit in hand, a smile that was as plastered as it seemed to be natural. “How are the preparations going?”

“Brian’s a great teacher. He’s really smarter than he lets on.”

“Ah, he’ll always be clumsy little Younghyun to us.” She placed a hand on her son’s back, laughing. Younghyun squeezed his eyes shut in an embarrassed smile.

“Ma!”

“Study well, hm? Let me know if you two need anything.”

When she left, Jae gave Brian a lopsided grin, popping a strawberry into his mouth. “Guess you’ll be my Brian then, the Younghyun side of you seems to be taken.”

Brian smiled. “Sure.”

Younghyun’s parents never quite liked the blond-dye, torn shorts, wannabe guitar-boy Jae. He was too carefree, too superficial. A boy who clearly couldn’t tell wrong and right apart due to his clear lack of upbringing, (which is fine, Younghyun’s parents explained, it’s just that he throws around fantastical ideologies and their son seems to be getting carried away with it.) Younghyun isn’t like Jae and shouldn’t be like him, his mother said. Jae doesn’t belong in his world where one is always preparing for the worst, aiming for the best, is prudent and responsible, obeys their parents and puts dignity over dreams. People like Jae may live their dream lives selfishly, but they’ll soon learn when reality hits, they said. 

This is reality. Studying, listening to his parents preparing and preparing and preparing for all sorts of predicaments. Checking off milestones for him to have the best of the best opportunities which only come and go, leaving Younghyun feeling empty and asking _“Is this what I worked so hard for? Is this it?”_

It never made sense to him. Why would it? Jae, with his blonde-dye and torn shorts, seemed happier. Free. Always. Even when he was dancing the limbo between today and tomorrow, reality and his grand, grand tomorrow. His home’s heater was almost always broken but it was still warm around the Park family’s dinner table. There were arguments about Jae becoming a singer and his parents wanting him to do something sensible like Business or Law and they’d look at Younghyun wistfully and say _“Ah, if only he had your maturity, Younghyun.”_

Younghyun would smile and say _“Jae is brave. He will make you proud.”_

Even with their mismatched worlds, it worked. Then, they would make promises of having a tomorrow within a world of their own.Today, Brian lives the tomorrow they were supposed to see together. Today, he is the boy who couldn’t bid Jae farewell at the airport because it was midnight, his parents were asleep and he had no way to drive down two neighbourhoods. The boy who was Brian with Jae and Younghyun without. Brian for Jae, to Jae. 

Having held his tears better than he had his words, today, in this moment of _finally_ and _just once_ , they rise up and fall down his face. He places the book on his thigh and puts pen to paper. Soon, the words that he swallowed bleed onto the page, running through and around tear stains. Brian writes a letter, hunched over pages that hold half his heart on a bay tucked between promise and secret. 

The bicycle stands on a pier that’s more moss than wood. Dusty and city-worn sneakers hang by the laces on its handles. Quietly, his only companion watches him from a distance it cannot cross. It’s not much different for Brian, who’s trying to bridge the yesterday and today across oceans. One word at a time. The waves wash them away, the currents drown them. 

It was long ago they thought of a great escape and dreams-come-true. Long before the postcard. Sitting on the edge of a skating ramp where Jae coerced Brian into trying a backside disaster which turned into an event with quite the same name. 

He remembers.

-

“What’s your dream, Brian?” Jae looked down at Brian, who had his head resting on the elder’s shoulder, cold water bottle pressed to the gash. The kicking of his heel against the wood in sets of 123,123,12 halted.

“Dream,” he echoed. 

“Yes, dream.”

“I don’t know, really. I just want to make my parents proud,” Brian shrugged, wiping the sweat trickling down his sideburns, “You?”

Jae exhaled, letting his weight sink against Brian. He smiled as if he knew better, his head resting atop Brian’s. “I want to fly,” he said, “far away.”

Brian’s laugh was a smile with a silent tremor. He closed his eyes. “Let’s go together, then.”

Jae said nothing. It was too much to ask, after all. And Jae wasn’t particularly a heartbreaker. Not by words, at least.

Younghyun has always lived well. Younghyun has always been good. It’s been this way for a while. Brian hid in the shadows. Bore the brunt of Younghyun’s sacrifices. Always had to be understood, always had to apologise, always made Jae wait on Younghyun’s decisions. 

Brian may have dreamed bigger than Jae did, but that would have easily been because Jae never needed to. Maybe, only maybe, Brian thinks, Jae wanted to leave everything that tied him down to what he was told is reality. Younghyun, Brian, always entrapped in reality, were left behind too. 

His letter ends on the last page of the notebook. In the end, all that’s left is enough space to write _I’m sorry._ And those are the only words, he thinks, worthy of filling in the space that should’ve said goodbye.

They slowly take the shape of Brian’s heart, and he folds the sheets into paper planes. The breeze slips them from between his fingers, catches and carries them as it did Jae. So he pretends these paper planes are pieces of whatever he's kept to himself of Jae and lets go, lets them fly, turning a blind eye to the fact that the waves catch them and wash them to the shore again. 

-

Younghyun does catch the sunset. The freezing air is slowly weighing down his shoulders, the afterglow of the sunset dimming. Which also means he’s going to be late. _Shit_.

As if on cue, his phone begins buzzing seconds after the realization hits. It’s Wonpil. 

The yelling begins before he puts the phone to his ear. “WHERE ARE YOU? YOU SAID YOU’D BE BACK BEFORE MY CLASSES END AND I’M ALREADY WAITING HERE FOR MORE THAN HALF AN HOUR _AFTER_ THEY’VE ENDED. ALL YOU’VE EVER DONE IS LIED, I SHOULDN’T HAVE TRUS-”

Younghyun's rarely heard Wonpil stage-scream. He never gets past whining. He doesn't know whether to take offence. It's a fleeting thought, but _that's such a Jae thing to do_ , he registers. There is indiscrete shuffling and Wonpil’s voice muffles into the background before a grittier, distinctly calmer voice rings in. “Kang bro, where are you? Is everything okay?” It's Sungjin.

“Yeah, um, I’m sorry, I lost track of time. It’s getting dark, yeah.” Younghyun's nose is stuffy, his voice is hoarse. Reasonable, it's cold out here anyways. Sungjin doesn't question it. Neither of the two ever do. Jaehyung was quite the opposite. Wouldn't leave him alone until he finally got answers. It got annoying every now and then, but still, even though it's nice to have company that has quiet understanding, Younghyun sometimes wishes someone would ask because that's what he was used to. Even if he were to answer no differently than _"It's nothing much, personal problems."_ and smile tiredly, he wishes someone would care enough to ask. 

“Dude it’s pouring, do you plan to take a bus or something? You can’t ride the bike in this weather."

“It’s raining? The weather is pretty clear where I am, though.”

“What? Where are you?”

“Oh, I’m about an hour away from the city. Not too far, just past the farmlands. Hyunjae coast. ”

“What the hell are you doing there? How did you manage to- never mind, we’re talking about this later. Right now the roads are too dark and the weather will be too cold for you to drive back in time. Send me your location, I’ll pick you up.”

“No, it’s fine, I can manage till the farming village and grab a bus from there. It’s fine. What about Wonpil though? He’s already late…”

“Don’t worry about him, I’ll drop him off. It shouldn’t take me more than fifteen minutes to reach you, can you wait there?”

“ No, hyung, it’s fine, I’ll manage.”

“Are you sure? Bro, I’ll pick you up, I’m telling yo-”

“I’ll call you when I get home hyung, take care!” Younghyun cuts the call, mounts his bike and sets his navigation on. He looks one last time at the sea. The last streaks of coral darken, the seawater spills into it like ink on paper. It darkens as it reaches him, the ends of the view catching on to the last rays of sunlight, until it leaves altogether. Younghyun thinks it’d make for a metaphor of himself. With that, he says goodbye and turns away. 

It’s not easy, he keeps turning to look at the sea until it’s glistening black under the charcoal night sky, and then nothing. The darkness beyond city lights is engulfing. There’s only the flickering street-lights, the bicycle lamp, and the momentary zips of car headlights as they rush past. Letting go is not a matter of a letter and an escapade for a handful of hours. He still has to go back to a cage he is yet to break free from. Besides the passage of time and memory, not much has changed for Younghyun. There’s still a longing heart for the world he looks out of his window, still a calling for the music rooms he passes by on his way to lecture halls, still the wish to be someone who could love and be loved, to stop and smell the roses that he cannot even seem to find.

But this is as good as it gets. There’s Sungjin who calls up his parents to ask if he can have dinner with him after said group project, Wonpil who doesn’t question Younghyun the day after and gives him a bright smile instead, Jae who hasn’t forgotten him and pretends like things aren’t as bad as they think they’re getting, and Younghyun, who’s slowly, slowly letting go.

Still, he thinks when he sees dim light bulbs shining under the awnings of old, bare-bricked vegetable stalls and hotpot restaurants, that it’d be nice to have someone to share a warm meal with as the ahjumma asks if he wants more side-dishes, that it’d be nice to have someone’s shoulder to lean on in the bus ride, that it’d be nice to call his parents and have someone lie for him on the phone with a shit-eating grin. That it’d be nice if Jaehyung was here. 


End file.
